


oscillation

by lady_peony



Category: Natsume Yuujinchou | Natsume's Book of Friends
Genre: M/M, canon tries my patience
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-05
Updated: 2015-10-05
Packaged: 2018-04-24 21:21:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4935787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lady_peony/pseuds/lady_peony
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Unintended deviations from script.</p>
            </blockquote>





	oscillation

A good opportunity, his manager had said. The role was exciting enough on a read-through and the caliber of his co-stars were not shabby at all. 

Shuuichi had nodded, perfunctorily skimming over the contract. At the back of his mind, he wondered if he needed to replenish his ink supply. He could check when he returned to the apartment but if he could remember earlier, he could drop by the stores before they closed. 

His manager had also repeated the time and location three times, telling him an assistant would call Shuuichi the day before the appointment. Shuuichi had smiled in reply to the unstated reprimand, murmured apologetically with minimal sparkle even. His manager had looked unmoved. 

He needed to find that address. His fingers ran along the inside seams of his pockets. Came up empty-handed. Or he could call someone but—he checked his pockets again. 

His cell was in his bag. Which was in his apartment.

He would need to return there soon. But he couldn't now, not when his left leg had fallen asleep under the weight of his right, the speakers of the circle still conversing in interested undertones, their gazes sifting occasionally through the crowd eddying between tables and the other sitting groups. 

Shuuichi's mouth was dry as chalk, but his cup was empty. A signal to leave, if it meant anything. He mouthed some polite excuse and uncrossed his legs. 

He stood. A row of invisible needles stabbed immediately through his left leg. 

Lucky, that he didn't wobble. 

He made his way out the room without difficulty, and after checking behind to make certain that the hum of whispers was no longer audible, he allowed the line of his shoulders to relax.

He looked up, realizing as he did that he had walked quite a distance from the gathering place.

He tilted back his head, stretching out an arm behind him. Overhead, the tree branches overlapped each other in thick layers, only allowing speckled patches of sunlight to brush the ground. 

Shuuichi brought down his arms. Narrowed his eyes at the tree trunks surrounding him. Ropes curved from different trunks, strung together to form a somewhat circular pattern. When his eye caught on the paper rectangles attached evenly along the ropes, their purpose becomes far too easy for him to guess.

He turned to the tree closest to hand. Reached out his fingers to rub the loose end of a rope. 

It looked fairly new to his eye. As did the piece of paper closest to its end. 

A hiss rose from the paper.

Shuuichi jerked back, immediately flinging the rope from his hand. 

A starburst of violet flame spurted up. Swallowed the paper whole in a gulp. 

Then, no paper at all, but a barely visible line of ash. Along the whole loop of rope, where all the other paper rectangles had burned. 

Soot rested on Shuuichi's fingers, gray and gritty. 

When Shuuichi turned, Matoba was close. 

Matoba's eye widened just a little when their gazes locked. Then it settled, back to the appraising stare Shuuichi was more familiar with.

"This isn't a place outsiders are meant to go. Unless it was the charms you were interested in, Natori-san?" 

"I don't need these." Shuuichi relaxed his hands at his side, fingers flecking away grains of soot as he did so."The width of the clearing and the ropes—whatever you're after is of a height too high for my skills, I think." 

Matoba reached a hand over Shuuichi's shoulder, palm passing by close enough to stir Shuuichi's hair. Shuuichi felt his gecko whisk from the side of his cheek to somewhere behind his collar, freezing in place over a knob of spine. 

Shuuichi didn't step back. He had no where else to move to, with the tree at his back.

"True," Matoba said. With a swift tug, he pulled until half the rope slid to the ground, curling up in a loose semicircle at Shuuichi's foot. "An unfair match it would be, if it were just one opponent it faced."

"You're here alone," Shuuichi said. 

Matoba's smile slid from convincingly pleasant to a more neutral expression. "Alone? The risk of danger here—almost negligible in the daytime." There are no shadowy figures at Matoba's heel, servile or aggressive, human or shiki. No obvious defense, other than the dark crescent of the bow by a stump behind Matoba, visible in Shuuichi's line of sight.

If Matoba had been up yesterday working on a trap of this scale and had to rebuild it again today, well. If Shuuichi was the helpful sort, he could.

Could do _what_ , exactly. 

"I'll leave you to it then," Shuuichi said. He wished he had chosen a different road home. 

Matoba dropped the rest of the rope from his hand, took a step to Shuuichi's left. Space is open now, an unhindered way for Shuuichi to leave.

Shuuichi reached his meeting just eleven minutes after the hour, bearing smiling apologies. He's always been good at brushing away his mistakes. 

 

-

 

From wall to wall, shining figures laughed politely over tiny glasses of gold. Flattery, bordering on flirtation, floated between the party-goers, their gazes flickering from guarded to exuberant in seconds. 

Three directors, five colleagues, and two script-writers later, Shuuichi bowed out with enough grace to be forgiven for his early departure

If he swapped his yukata for a suit, there would be little difference for the event here.

Almost no difference. Exorcist chit-chat had a tendency to show more teeth.

In between the rustle of robes brushing along the floor, he can pick out the occasional greeting, pleasant inquiries on business. And of course, the occasional ripple of muttering, threaded through with truth or deceit. One could never be too sure. 

"Who was it who had left this time? The family from Kagoshima?"

"The daughter, you mean? She had moved to a city—or her relative's place in the town nearby. Has the sight, but doesn't want to put it to use. Did you hear that Matoba—?"

Shuuichi sidestepped the approach of a short woman in finch-brown robes. Redrew his focus to the conversation. 

"—overseeing training? A waste." 

"Wiser to refuse, some say." A soft thump as something is placed down. A glass? "Matoba has first pick, and even they gather—my thanks for the drink. The offers they gather are more substantial than most. Not always enough, for all in their clan."

"Substantial? Only given to the Matoba head, of course. With all those below to carry out the work." The laugh has a gleeful undertone that grated on Shuuichi's ears. "Not like the rest of us, who must look elsewhere for our bread. He wouldn't last a week in a stabler occupation, outside." 

Shuuichi's stomach twisted. Yesterday's dinner conversation floated upwards, too close in memory for his comfort.

 _Depending on something like your looks for a living? Too unstable to depend on. See, Sumi-san. He listens to no one, not even his father._

The edge of his empty bowl had rested cold and solid against Shuuichi's fingers. He had slipped out back after the meal. 

Evening found him sleeping at a nearby inn.

So much for his monthly visit.

The visits were helpful as a practice, for snagging a needed scroll from the storeroom, reinforcing wards on family grounds. Helpful, undeniably. Liking it was a different matter. 

"Matoba-sama is not someone to shirk from danger, as word goes—and yet, what you say is sound. What reason for him to risk his neck when others can prop up his name? We have the worst of it." 

The two talking paused at an unexpected whispery noise from the ground.

"My pardon," Shuuichi said, bending down between the two to scoop up the scroll. "I don't believe we have met. How may I address you?"

"Natori-san," one answered. The shorter one, with paper draped over his forehead, reaching down to the tip of his nose. "What need would one like yourself have to ask for our names?" 

"No, nothing too troublesome," Shuuichi said. He crossed his hands to cradle the wrists opposite, his sleeves drawing together with that motion. "I had heard the both of you were seeking new assignments. Perhaps a few of my contacts have something of interest for you."

"That would be kind of you," the other said quickly. His mask is red ceramic, expensive-looking compared to his shorter counterpart's. "But my schedule is not open now. I cannot accept at present." 

"Nor I," said the shorter. 

"Well. It can't be helped," Shuuichi said. Smiled brightly. "Next time, then."

A wary glance from the short one, and they shuffled away, an obvious disconcerted air to their backs. 

Shuuichi kept his smile for the rest of the evening when he mingled.

As he departed later, a prickle crept up his neck. It's not the usual sensation from his gecko. When he looked upwards at a window and squinted—a shape seemed to move, then withdrew. 

Just flickering shadows from the wind through branches, Shuuichi told himself. That was all. 

 

-

 

Shuuichi turned his head at the sound of his name, mouth already lifting into an automatic smile. Not as bright as his movie star usual. He managed one all the same. 

"Matoba," Shuuichi said. Would it have been politer to add an honorific? The pause had lingered too long, though Matoba's eyes— _eye_ —remained unperturbed. 

"It is a surprise to see you. Did you not decline today's invitation?"

"I did. I finished an errand early," Shuuichi said, raising a hand to flick back an irritating strand of hair from the front of his eyes. 

"Murata-san appreciates your appearance, I'm sure." Matoba turned his head from Shuuichi, wrist sweeping up to catch something from the air. The paper shiki twitched in his hand, then stilled. 

Matoba glanced back at Shuuichi once. Said nothing else before he folded the shiki in half, dropping it into his pocket, and walked past Shuuichi, his kimono a dark outline against the lighter wood of the floors and the walls.

Shuuichi's gaze slid down from Matoba's back to his arm. 

Something looked different there, dangling from the lip of his sleeve. From Matoba's sleeve.

It slipped out. 

Shuuichi had caught it in his hands before he knew what it was. 

No, Shuuichi corrected himself, he knew what it was. The bandage in his fingers was soft, the strip of cloth white except for the dark patch near Shuuichi's thumb. "You better get rid of this," he said. 

He released it from his grasp of his forefinger and thumb to let it lie on his palm, offered it mutely upwards. From where Shuuichi stood, the light was brightest on the white of the bandage in his hand, then stray arcs here and there trembling along Matoba's jaw, his shoulder. Shadows rested everywhere else. 

Shuuichi knew enough of exorcist lore to know what could be done with the cloth in his hand.

Matoba's fingertips reached out—the left hand, Shuuichi noted—and tugged the fabric off Shuuichi's palm. 

Something faintly astringent, herbal, drifted through the air with the movement. Shuuichi stepped away, leaving Matoba's hand hovering with the white strip gripped between his fingers, until the bandage disappeared somewhere into the sleeve of Matoba's kimono. 

"My thanks," Matoba said.

For a moment, a pang of something too close to sympathy caught in Shuuichi's throat. 

"Was it only—?" The words had jumped out before Shuuichi had realized that they did so. He stopped, wrestled back the rest. 

He had known when he was younger, as he still knew now. Injuries were part and parcel of their work, clan head or not. 

Matoba pulled up his sleeve, rotating his wrist to stare at the bandages wrapping his hand to his elbow. "For the prize we gained? Our losses were acceptable." The sleeve dropped, covering his hand again. 

"So that's how it was," Shuuichi said. Breathed in a knotted pull of air, of wood and aged paper, impressions of stone and burnt oil beneath.

It had been a relief later, to open the door to the aseptic air-conditioned interior of his apartment. 

There wasn't anything else he needed to ask, he reminded himself, shoving the scroll he had been reviewing to the box at his elbow. Tomorrow perhaps, he would have better focus after a night's rest. 

_How long before they ask something from you that you can't give?_

No point, after all, in asking questions with unhappy answers.


End file.
